by Lavonne Leong and Anisah Abdullah The Hesitant Feminist’s Guide to the Future was written for futurists and the futures-curious who believe that all genders should be considered equal, and yet weren’t sure whether they were allowed to call themselves or their practice ‘feminist’, or what price they might pay for doing so. We have all taken different paths to arrive at this symposium’s doorstep. Many of us are , or have been at one time, hesitant feminists. One of us, raised by a feminist mother, has been a feminist since before she left grade school–and sometimes still doesn’t mention…
Author: Abdul Jabbar Ismadi
by Sanna Ketonen-Oksi & Tiina Wikström Why feminism? As authors, we are two white middle-aged females with a doctoral level degree in science. As mothers of 3 daughters, we live in Finland, a democratic country that was ranked as the happiest country in the world in 2024, seventh time in a row (!). There is not much for us to complain or worry. Right? Yet, we have both lived in several continents and have always been internationally oriented, interested in learning about and from other cultures. The many personal connections and everyday experiences we have encountered both in the Global…
by Gillian Youngs The heavy emphasis on questions that confront us in ‘The Hesitant Feminist’s Guide to the Future’ (Milojevic 2024) is a useful and powerful approach to the contemporary state of play in both the thinking about and application of what might be termed feminist principles. One takeaway message from the approach is the need for such questions to be recognized and extensively debated, including in diverse arenas of policy and practice. International relations is clearly one of these arenas, concerning as it does state-based patriarchal structures and their expression through state-to-state and wider international processes and events. Feminist…
by Susana Hernandez-Toro, Rike Neuhoff & Kirsten van Dam Introduction In this article, three women come together to explore what “mother, motherhood, and mothering” – terms that occupy a unique space in feminist discourse, as personal experiences and deeply political institutions (e.g. Zufferey & Buchanan, 2019) – mean within feminist futures. All three of us work in the field of futures – Author 1 and Author 2 in a strategy-design consultancy and Author 3 as a researcher and teacher at a university. Anchored in the Futures Triangle (Inayatullah, 2008) as a framework, we discuss how the weight of the past,…
by Steven Litchy Introduction Quantum feminist futures represent the fusion of quantum social theory (QST) and feminist futures, offering a robust and holistic interdisciplinary framework for addressing some of the complexities of the shared epistemic, spiritual, and global challenges related to our meta-crisis (Rowson, 2020). Contemporary dominant paradigms guiding humanity’s engagement with society, governance, economies, and our shared natural environment remain trapped in epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies (values, ethics, aesthetics, etc.) that typically only produce more “used futures.” These are unlikely to change radically in the coming decades; therefore, this short article contributes a speculative futures exploration of quantum feminist…
by Joelle Roth Abstract This essay, titled ‘The 25th Hour,’ examines gender-based time inequality through the lens of feminist futures studies, weaving together personal narrative, academic research, and futures thinking methodology. Drawing on Ivana Milojević’s work on feminist futures, it analyzes how traditional societal structures systematically allocate time unequally, creating a pervasive time deficit that particularly impacts women in Southeast Asia. The essay employs Causal Layered Analysis to examine how this temporal inequality manifests across different analytical layers, from visible daily challenges to deeper mythological underpinnings. Through an intersectional approach, the essay explores how factors such as geographic location and…
by Christopher Jones It was an honor to contribute to the polylogue about hesitant feminism (Milojević 2024). I have been fortunate to be able to encourage and promote women’s futures and women futurists over many years of research, writing, and teaching. Milojevićʻs (2024) provocative text cast a light on the challenges facing feminist futurists of any gender. By her definition, I am a futurist and feminist: a person who advocates for women’s equality, the feminist principles of non-violence, gender balance, social justice, and diversity of expression. In response to her checklist (Milojević, 2024, p. 58), I answered in the affirmative…
by Zorana Antonijevic The future has always been a subject of speculation and hope, particularly within the feminist movement. As a feminist activist and scholar, I often find myself grappling with the complexities of envisioning a more just world, especially in light of the persistent violence and inequality that women face today. When invited to write about the feminist future as part of the Journal of Feminist Futures Symposium, after having reflected on the Hesitant Feminist’s Guide to the Future (Milojević, 2024), my initial reaction was despair; the challenges seem insurmountable, and the weight of historical injustices often obscures the…
by Esmee Wilcox Do we need feminism today? To self-identify as a feminist in the UK over and above membership of other social change movements seems somewhat out of kilter. The influence of the association (misappropriation or otherwise) of the brand with a western white movement; the social media profile of the anti-women discourse amongst young men; the recognition of a spectrum of gender identities; and our awareness of a plurality of multiply held identities that affect the context of equality: have we chosen to, or even been asked to, move on? The generation of women that experienced the marriage…
by Elaine France Innovation and Entrepreneurship Consultant, Founder of Flow In Action and Flourishing Futures Collective, and Futures Thinking Guide, University of Geneva, Geneva School of Economics & Management, The Geneva Responsible Entrepreneurship Center, Geneva, Switzerland Abstract This essay is a personal exploration of the future of women’s entrepreneurship, using causal layered analysis and scenarios, to experience developing new metaphors to catalyse women entrepreneurs beyond current eco-system barriers in response to the climate emergency. Keywords Feminist Futures, Women’s Entrepreneurship, Causal Layered Analysis, Scenario Planning, Climate Emergency. Context In the Age of the Anthropocene (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000), it is widely…